REVIEWS Unistat 6.0 E
very scientist has to be a statistician these days, but not every scientist wants to be. The ideal data analysis tool, for many, is one that does what is required while demanding the
least possible diversion of mental energy from core concerns, the fewest possible changes to working habits and the least possible investment in reskilling. Unistat is a well-established occupant of this market segment with a proven track record, particularly in the life sciences. As with previous releases, installation of
6.0 provides two short cut icons: one to start up Unistat as a free standing window with its own worksheet, the other to open Excel with an additional ribbon toolbar accessing Unistat’s tool set (other spreadsheet and database files can also be opened, and Unistat offers developer tools allowing add-in facility to virtually any other suitable product if required). There is remarkably little to choose, operationally, between the two options. The most demanding user will always find that the freestanding option has the edge, but those more comfortable within Excel are unlikely to notice any significant disadvantage. A wide range of additions and improvements
have been implemented since the last version. The comprehensiveness of the upgrade is too great to be usefully addressed in a short review,
OriginPro 8.5
useful improvements and new developments in a number of areas. Most of them are common to both Origin and OriginPro, though the 2D FFT Filter is restricted to the Pro version. One, perhaps apparently peripheral to the core
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function at first sight, but valuable to scientific users as part of a thorough documentary regime quite apart from straightforward communication, is embedding of external OLE dynamic objects. This is primarily aimed at MS Office users bringing over their material from Word or Excel, but when explored works well for every supply application I tried – from graphics programs through PDFs to live material being processed in other data analysis packages. Particularly beguiling is having live, editable equations on the same page as plots – Design Science’s MathType, and a couple of other third- party equation editors with equal simplicity, as well as OpenOffice’s formula tool with a bit of fiddling, but it can be done. A single button on the Tools toolbar can be clicked and held to open a choice of Equation, Word, Excel or generic Object pick list insertion; when simply clicked once it defaults to the most recent selection.
ith the latest incremental version update (8.1 to 8.5, now at service release 1), OriginLab’s increasingly versatile data graphics package sees
On the analysis front, OriginPro’s ‘gadgets’
(introduced at the last upgrade) acquire new facilities including statistics extraction within or without an arbitrarily selectable region of interest. The region can be rectangular or (particularly valuable) elliptical, or even flipped back and forth between the two. Results can be exported on the fly to worksheets for presentation, examination or further analysis. Also new in the line up is a gadget to display derivatives (to various orders) of a fitted curve over a chosen independent variable range. Curve fitting itself, at any level of real exploratory
complexity, benefits enormously from the Fitting Function Builder. This is a new productivity wizard (in addition to the Fitting Function Organizer) that takes in hand and structures the process of designing, editing and organising bespoke data fits through a simple dialogue interface. Visualisation gives the option to plot a three- dimensional surface directly from the worksheet without the chore of first ‘gridding’ it through transform to a true matrix of regularly spaced x and y coordinates. There’s a lot more, particularly in small detail improvements which can make a big difference in some areas of use, such as metadata and data information or the new pan and zoom arrangements.
www.originlab.com
but can be explored (along with the full 1,100 page documentation for the package) either on the company’s website or through a demo download. Suffice to say that it covers all the territory likely to be required. There are three versions of the product: light,
Choosing the edition or editions to be purchased will involve matching the exact feature sets to required tasks within a particular setting ecology
standard and bioassay. The standard edition, upon which this review is based, has no dataset size limits beyond system memory, whereas the light version is capped at 50 variables and 1,500 cases. The light version lacks the recorded macro facilities, log file, some more advanced regression options, multivariate and time series analyses; all of which are available in the standard edition. The bioassay edition is the standard with an additional specialist module. Choosing the edition or editions to be purchased will involve matching the exact feature sets to required tasks within a particular setting ecology. If your data analytic needs are exploratory,
or call for a menu driven environment rather than a programming language, Unistat 6.0 is a strong contender for your shortlist – if you or your organisation regard MS Office integration as a priority, but do not want to be confined within its limitations, even more so. If you already use a previous version of Unistat, the advantages of upgrade are well worth examining.
www.unistat.com
Particularly beguiling is having live, editable equations in the same page as plots
Statistics special 29
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